Emmett Barnacle
Featuring architectural and maritime scenes cast in glass, my sculpture merges historical elements with ideas drawn from fiction and personal memory to create playful, often whimsical, moments. I celebrate color, texture, and beauty through depictions of ancient ruins, doors, windows, lighthouses, ships, and other symbols tied to the sea and my New England roots. I’m interested in the concept of home and our evolving relationships with the environments we inhabit. Simultaneously evoking a sense of both arrival and departure, my work ponders the question of just where it is we’re going.
Using the ancient lost-wax technique, I begin each piece by sculpting a wax model, evolving my forms through imagination and intuition. The wax model is then encased in a heat-resistant mold, melted out, and cast in glass in kilns reaching 1500 degrees fahrenheit. Each piece is then refined through extensive cold-working techniques including cutting, grinding, and polishing to reveal clarity, depth, and detail embedded within the glass. This labor-intensive process mirrors the layered histories of the structures which inspire me, transforming architectural memory into luminous form.
Emmett Barnacle was born in Providence Rhode Island in 1988. He began working in glass in 2007 with Pean Doubulyu Glass and and then with artist Steven Weinberg before attending Rhode Island School of Design and graduating in 2014 with a BFA in Glass. After graduation he began his own studio in Pawtucket Rhode Island. Other than working on his own work Emmett has worked as a technical assistant for glass artist and sculptor Daniel Clayman for the past few years as well as other freelance work for other artists.
